


Duct Tape Makes You Smart

by AlchemyAlice



Series: My name is Charles Xavier. I used to be a spy... [1]
Category: Burn Notice, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Spy, Burn Notice - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-26
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-23 02:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlchemyAlice/pseuds/AlchemyAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt at <a href="http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/"></a><b>1stclass_kink</b> : <em>X-Men</em> via <em>Burn Notice</em>. "My name is Charles Xavier. I used to be a spy..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duct Tape Makes You Smart

Charles wakes up feeling mostly trampled. His head feels twice its normal size, his ribs are protesting every time he breathes, and he’s fairly certain his knee is twisted in a new and unpleasant way.

He sort of wishes this didn’t feel quite so business-as-usual.

He squints at the blazing sun coming through the blinds. He knows without looking that there’s someone else in the room with him.

“Where am I?” he inquires to the room at large.

“New York.”

Oh, bugger. Charles tries very hard not to tense, if only for the sake of his ribs. He only partially succeeds.

“Erik,” he says, keeping his tone as level as possible, “What are you doing here?”

“You,” Erik says coolly, “Really need to take me off your emergency contact list.”

Still squinting, Charles turns gingerly and surveys him. Erik looks good, as always. Suave and trim and exactly how a spy should look, which is why he never quite managed to be one. Charles, on the other hand, knows that he looks professorly and unassuming. It’s one of his most useful qualities. “And yet, you’re here,” he points out.

“So I am. I needed to get out of Europe anyway.”

“Ah. How’s the gunrunning for terrorists going?”

Erik glares. “I sell to causes, not terrorists. And business is booming, thank you.”

Right. Charles should probably not antagonize the one contact he has in the city he’s been dropped in when he’s…when he’s…

It all comes flooding back.

Shit.

His eyes have gone comically wide, he knows, because Erik’s glare has shifted into raised eyebrows and curiosity. “What?” he inquires.

“I’ve been burned.”

\--

  
It’s Hank who finds him the first job and an apartment. He’d been a premier scientist working in R&D for the NSA right up until they’d discovered that he’d been covertly allocating money for more…esoteric research. Nowadays, he spends most of his time doing freelance for shady corporations and apparently providing tactical support for his ex-Special Forces boyfriend, Alex.

“Alex,” Charles repeats as they walk up to the dingy loft apartment that Charles’ now-very-limited funds barely affords. “Alex Summers? You’re dating Alex Summers.”

“We’re not…it’s casual.”

One of the things that makes Charles a spectacularly good spy is that his ability to read people is almost uncanny. One glance at Hank, and he knows that it is not casual at all.

“Oh,” he says. “Well, that’s nice. I’m guessing he’s given you some good lessons in field work?”

Hank grins a little. “It’s been a while since you saw me last. But you should probably know that nowadays I can pretty much handle myself.”

Charles blinks, and reassesses the wiry bulk of the scientist he’d known years back. “I believe you.”

Hank jerks his head in invitation as he unlocks the door to the loft. “Come on in. Your landlord’s heard horror stories about you from the motherland, and I’m pretty sure you’re living next to a drug dealer, but other than that it’s convenient enough. I’m assuming you don’t mind the raver club next door?”

Charles has slept entire nights under heavy artillery fire. “Not at all.”

\--

  
The client is a hapless gardener being framed by his rich asshole boss in order to defraud his insurance company. He has less than five grand to offer for the job, and Charles needs to pay not only for the task itself, but also his new apartment, a new wardrobe, inevitable first aid supplies, and also various plans for evading the CIA agents that have been tailing him like eager hounds all over the city.

MI-5 burns him, and then they send Americans to sit on him. It’s positively insulting.

But the point is that he’s working for peanuts, almost to the point where he wants to turn it down and find something more lucrative, but then the gardener, Gerald, invites him to dinner and he meets his doe-eyed seven-year-old daughter Lisbeth who asks him if he’s like Batman only British, and dammit, Charles is terrible at not getting attached.

So yeah, he’s taking the job.

His phone rings while he’s making a mock pipe bomb out of some cannibalized digital watches and fertilizer. “Hello?”

“Charles! When are you coming to dinner?”

Charles blinks. “Raven? How did you get this number?”

“Your friend Erik called me. Were you seriously going to come to New York and not see me?”

“I…” Charles closes his eyes. “No. Things are just complicated right now.”

“Things are always complicated with you,” Raven replies. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you.”

He sighs. “We didn’t exactly part ways on the best of terms.” Because of the fire, and their mother dying, and Raven wanting to go her own way, so that before she could leave him he’d done his best to leave her first. Charles is great at reading people, but sometimes he's really good at doing the wrong thing anyway.

She had yelled, and cried, and called him a coward on the way out, and so he’d gone and done the bravest thing he could think of. Now he knows eight languages, can fly four types of planes and is so combat effective he can practically kill people with his mind.

“Charles. You've been away for seven years,” Raven says. “Come home.”

...And that’s all that she needs to do to make him fold like wet cardboard.

“Yes, okay.”

He’s still going to kill Erik for calling her.

\--

Hank calls to inform him that Gerald’s rich asshole boss has gone and hired a kidnapper to take Lisbeth as collateral so that Gerald won’t go to the cops with proof of the insurance fraud. He also hired an assassin for Gerald as a backup plan.

Charles is going to have a conniption if he can’t acquire a motorcycle, and be across town in the next ten minutes. Oh, and also stop the assassin approaching from two blocks away.

“I can take him out, but not in time to get to Lisbeth as well,” he says, moving fast. “Are you or Alex any closer—?”

“No,” Hank says. He hesitates, and then adds, “I know someone who is.”

Charles swallows. “I’ll call him.”

Erik answers after the second ring. “Unless you’re groveling and admitting you were wrong I don’t want to hear it.”

“There’s a little girl about to be kidnapped in Hamilton Heights, and I have to go take out an assassin hired to kill her father on the Upper East Side. I’ll owe you.”

There’s a pause, and then, “How will she trust me, and where do I bring her?”

“Tell her you’re Robin to my Batman, and bring her to my loft. I’ll keep her safe until her father can get them both out of the city.”

“You owe me dinner,” Erik says, “And between the two of us, I am definitely Batman.”

He hangs up.

Charles exhales, texts Erik the exact address, and sprints down 2nd Avenue to go throw himself in the path of a trained killer.

It’s one of the few times he doesn’t regret being one himself.

\--

Charles first met Erik while pretending to be an arms dealer in Sudan.

Erik had been doing the same, except that he hadn’t been pretending.

They’d shared drinks and business strategies, and occasionally engaged in friendly competition (though Charles’ cover was small-fry, a small but useful temporary asset to Erik’s enormous and destructive operation that fueled multiple coups and democratic revolutions across Africa and the Middle East).

“You do realize that most freedom fighters become the next wave of dictators, don’t you?” Charles had said to him once, as they’d sat sweltering in the sun waiting for a shipment of assault rifles to come in, drinking lukewarm beer. “You’re not going to achieve peace in any of these countries by supporting them through violence.”

“Peace isn’t the point,” Erik had said, looking at him sidelong, and yeah, Charles was usually much better at keeping his cover, but Erik tended to have this problematic effect on him, “The point is the struggle. The point is to give back to the oppressors what they have done to the oppressed. The point is to make them hurt as much as you do.”

Charles had looked at him then and asked, “Who hurt you?”

And Erik had met his gaze, fury banked in every line of his face, and answered in the same soft tone, “That’s none of your goddamn business, Charles.”

Charles smiled crookedly at him. “I know.”

They’d tumbled into bed not long after that, and despite having to smile over profiting off of giving weapons to very dangerous people while simultaneously shunting intel back to the Home Office without getting caught, Charles could easily say it was one of the best times of his life.

And then things had blown up in his face, both literally and metaphorically, and his handler had pulled him out of Sudan to plant him in Cuba, and as a parting gift Erik had shot him in the back. Again, literally and metaphorically.

The literal one nearly paralyzed him. It was at that point that Charles began to have serious doubts about his career choice. But really, you go as deep into intelligence work as Charles did in the shadier parts of government, and you can’t exactly walk out, no matter how much you have fundamental moral quandaries about some of the work you get tasked to do.

Six months recovery in an Italian hospital, and he was landing in Cuba as planned. Life went on. But Erik wasn’t there to make it interesting.

So to say that Charles had been surprised to see him in New York was very much an understatement.

\--

Rich asshole boss’s assassin is good. Charles is better.

Gerald is profusely thankful, and is packing an overnight bag to pick up Lisbeth and then take her to his sister’s house in Long Island.

Charles limps back to his apartment with the suspicion that his ribs have been re-cracked and finds the door ajar.

He draws his gun.

“Nice place you’ve got here.”

He puts it away. “Thanks. Hank found it for me.”

Lisbeth runs at him like a mini freight train and hits him—damn it—in his bad leg. “Did you do Batman things? Did you kill the bad guy?”

“Uh…rather,” Charles says, and smoothes her hair with his not-bloody hand. She clings to his thigh. Apparently this was the right answer.

Erik is watching them in a vague approximation of amusement. “Next time Charles, I get to do the killing of bad guys. I know how distasteful it is to you.”

“It’s never been my favorite part of the job, no,” Charles says, with a warning look. He glances back down at Lisbeth. “Lisbeth, your Dad’s going to be here shortly, and then you’re going to go over to your Aunt Rose’s house. Is that all right?”

She nods solemnly.

“Good.”

“I’ll just be going, then,” Erik says, slipping his jacket on. He looks at Charles. “Dinner had best be expensive. Pick some place with good martinis and proper steak, would you? Friday at seven.” He passes Charles in the doorway, and leans in slightly.

Charles pretends his heart rate remains steady.

“Don’t be late,” Erik murmurs, breath warm against Charles’ neck, and then he’s gone, door closing behind him.

Lisbeth blinks owlishly. “Are you and Erik special friends like Batman and Robin too?”

Charles closes his eyes, and silently prays for the floor to swallow him.

\--

“So,” Raven grins, “Who is this Erik guy who called me the other day?”

“He’s…a work colleague?” Charles tries. “From a long time ago.”

“Uh huh. I’m sure you did a lot of _work_ together.”

Charles gulps his wine. Coming up to the Westchester estate was a terrible decision. “How’s your work doing anyway? What do you do now?”

In a moment of kindness, she allows the change of topic. “I’m an artist. Sculpture, mostly. I enjoy doing studies of transformation.”

He smiles. “That sounds rather nice, actually.”

“Yeah. Well. It wasn’t…it wasn’t great, after you left, you know,” she says, pushing her salad around on her plate. “Cain’s lawyers kept trying to kick up a fuss about inheritance, even though I said he could be in the house while I was at school, and…I had to find something to do.”

Charles swallows. “It wouldn’t have been any better, if I’d stayed.”

“You underestimate yourself. But it’s okay now. Cain’s out of the picture, the house is back to its former glory and I’m…I’m okay.”

“Good.” He pauses. “How would you feel about me borrowing the Concours?”

She raises an eyebrow. “It’s not borrowing if it’s already yours. But…don’t run away with it.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says truthfully, and tries to sound like it doesn’t horrify him.

Because the fact of the matter is, he can’t. He’s lucky he can get this far out of New York City as it is.

Raven beams at him. He smiles weakly back.

Getting back on his old bike is awfully satisfying, though.

\--

Erik comes to the restaurant looking like a GQ spread, and Charles decides that his life has become terribly unfair in the past week. “You’re late,” he accuses.

“And you’re right on time, just as I asked,” Erik responds. “Still good at following orders, are we?”

He settles in his seat, and orders a very expensive steak, making the waitress blush and giggle in the process. Charles reaches for his glass of wine until he realizes that this will be the second time in a week that he's trying to crawl into a bottle to escape awkward conversations. He reaches for his water glass instead. He should probably stay on his toes with Erik anyway.

Raven may be good at asking difficult questions, but she’s never actively decided he was an enemy combatant.

“Burned by your own government, and then kicked out of your home country to boot,” Erik says, ticking it off his fingers. “I assume you’ve already absorbed the irony of your situation. Blacklisted by the very institution you risked your life to uphold. Deserted by your allies now that you’ve been marked as _persona non grata._ ”

“If you’re going to spend this whole evening gloating, it’s going to be very dull indeed,” Charles says through gritted teeth.

“Still believe in the sanctity of government?”

He exhales. “Yes. Of course I do. The work I did was important. And I’m going to find my way back in, once this damned burn notice business is sorted.”

Erik shakes his head in disappointment. Charles decides to take a chance.

“Erik,” he says, “Politics and job aside, I didn’t lie to you. Not once.”

The muscles in Erik’s jaw twitch. If Charles hadn’t been looking for it, he would have missed the flash of vulnerability that chases across his features before leaving him impassive, as always.

“That almost makes it worse,” he says finally. And then, after a second, “I need another drink.”

Charles thinks, _Well, at least this time it’s the both of us crawling into the bottle._

\--

He doesn’t remember a lot about the rest of the night.

There may have been some inappropriate touching involved that they will definitely not be talking about ever.

Did…did they get mugged?

Yes. Yes they did. Not that it did the mugger any good.

And now Erik has his gun. Fantastic.

\--

The first lead on the burn notice falls into his hands two weeks after he's dumped in New York, but he doesn’t have a chance to do anything about it because instead he finds himself inexplicably trying to rescue one of Raven’s artist acquaintances from a hostage situation. So then Hank is frantically researching who’s behind the takeover of the art gallery they’re stuck in, and Alex is running interference with the local PD, and Charles needs someone with him on the inside who can bring supplies and knows what he’s doing.

So he calls Erik.

“I might need some back up,” he says. “How do you feel about crawling through some air ducts today?”

“No one uses air ducts anymore, Charles,” Erik says, but from the rustling in the background Charles can tell that he’s grabbing his jacket and gun and heading out the door. “And how do you end up in these situations anyway?”

“Spy,” Charles reminds him.

“Ex-spy. You just enjoy kicking up trouble.”

“I’m trying to help people.”

“Of course you are,” Erik says, and surely Charles is hallucinating the fondness in his tone before he hangs up.

Thirty minutes later Erik is crashing through a vent onto one of the bad guys, twisting the gun from his hands like it was never his to begin with; meanwhile, Charles manages to convince the leader of the operation that his cohorts are too psychologically unstable to be trusted and should immediately be sacrificed to the police outside.

Raven’s friend is sobbing and shaking, but she’ll be fine, along with everyone else.

“Did you just verbally induce the mental breakdown of a criminal mastermind?” Erik asks mildly, as they walk away from the building, Alex following behind, talking to Hank on the phone while disposing of his stolen police officer uniform.

“Maybe,” Charles allows.

“I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

He glances at Erik, but he is completely unreadable.

\--

Liking Charles doesn’t stop Erik from continuing his own special brand of illegal dealings when he’s not providing tactical support and frighteningly competent damage control for Charles’ various jobs. Some weeks later Charles catches him selling AK-47s to Yemeni freedom fighters down at the docks, but he stays out of the way and out of sight until the deal is over and the trucks have pulled away.

Erik spots him immediately. “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t answering your phone,” Charles says, “So I hacked its GPS.”

“So romantic. Are you going to lecture me on what just went down?”

“Got me shot last time, didn’t it.”

Erik flinches. “That was an accident. You were in the way.”

“I’m guessing selling me out wasn’t, though,” Charles points out.

“I’d just found out you were a spy,” he hisses.

“And I was just about to tell you that I lo—”

Shit. Charles needs to stop talking right now. Erik is staring at him like he’s just _daring_ Charles to finish that sentence. Charles is definitely not going to, though.

Mostly because if he does, it’s going to be in present tense, not past, and that is something he is just not ready to face yet.

He sighs. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you to be careful with these kind of deals. I’ve stirred up some rather sensitive bees’ nests to find out why I was burned, and now I’m finding agents sniffing around for leverage to use in case I start turning over rocks they don’t want disturbed. If they find out you help me on jobs, then they could—” he stops abruptly. “Oh fuck.”

He grabs Erik and throws them both off the dock as one of the storage containers explodes.

\--

Three days before, Charles had tracked down the dossier that had been used as evidence for the issuing of his burn notice.

It was interesting, to say the least, to read the complete and utter bollocks that had apparently been passing for truth among Charles’ former bosses.

Although in places not so much interesting as utterly horrifying. “What did I ever do to deserve accusations of drug trafficking in Nigeria?” he exclaimed, raking a hand through his hair.

Hank looked up from his newspaper. “You’re a spy, Charles. Some people don’t like you.”

“Yes, but no one with high enough clearance to insert an entire mission into this,” Charles gestured in disgust. Then he stopped. 

“Hank. When does an NSA officer have clearance to edit SIS databases?”

Hank raised an eyebrow. “How about never?”

“Yes, yes indeed,” Charles said, pulling up a sheet from the dossier. “Either British counterintelligence has decided to hire an officer who spells theatre with an ‘-er’, or someone American is looking to poach me.”

“This someone got a name?”

“One Sebastian Shaw. Heard of him?”

Hank frowned. “Actually, maybe. Let me call Alex, and I’ll let you know.”

\--

Alex had in fact heard of him.

And apparently, Sebastian Shaw does not take kindly to having his name come out from behind classified censor bars.

\--

They all reconvene at Charles’ apartment. Erik wasn’t the only one to be targeted by Shaw’s ire today.

Alex is pacing, sporting a cut on his eyebrow and a bruised wrist from an ambitious mugging, and Hank is arguing on his phone with one of his corporate contacts who is accusing him of espionage. Raven is curled on the sofa, quiet and distressed. Policemen had stopped by the Westchester estate with claims that she’d been only pretending to be Charles’ sister to take over ownership of the house. They’d threatened to arrest her for fraud.

And Erik is looking much like Charles—wet, concussed, and miserable.

Charles surveys them all. This is all his fault.

“I’m going to sort this,” he says.

“Not without our help,” Hank snorts, hanging up the phone and throwing it on the couch.

“I’m putting you all in danger.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Erik drawls, “But danger is generally our _modus operandi_. Except for Raven, and we’ll protect her.”

Charles shakes his head. “I can’t ask that of you—”

“Charles,” Raven says, wiping her eyes but sounding firm, “We’re more than slightly invested in your well being. Let us help you.” She shrugs. “After all, I have managed to pretend to be your sister all these years. I’m practically a con woman already.”

Erik grins. “I like your family, Charles.”

His eyes say something a lot more specific.

Charles nods slowly. “Okay. Okay, fine.”

\--

Their play involves a long con with a group of Serbian arms dealers (courtesy of Erik), interrogating a Homeland Security agent viciously enough to flip him, and a goddamn submarine three miles off the coast of Manhattan.

For that last one, Charles has to call in a favor from Moira, who sighs over the phone like he just asked her to commit harakiri in front of the president.

“Charles,” she says, “I know that I owe you a favor or two. You’ve done more for this binational ‘special friendship’ than my ten best agents combined. But what you’re asking for would get me eviscerated.”

“ _If_ anyone found out,” Charles points out. “Can you manage it? I can give you some backup, if you need it.”

“I need backup from your people like I need a hole in the head. Fine, I’ll do it, but after this I get an indefinite number of jobs from you, do you understand?”

“Perfectly, Moira, thank you,” Charles says cheerily, and hangs up.

Erik glowers at him from the other side of the room.

“What?”

“Resorting to old flames, are we?”

Charles frowns. “Nothing ever happened between Moira and I. She’s a good operative and a good friend, and I’m glad she’s safe behind a desk nowadays. But that’s it.”

“So professional.”

“That is what we are,” he says neutrally.

He’s not feeling so neutral when Erik is suddenly close behind him, his warmth radiating over the curve of his back. “Guess that makes me an exception,” Erik says.

Charles swallows. “I know I didn’t compromise my moral principles for you, Erik,” he says, “But everything else? That was pretty much fair game.”

Erik’s breath stutters. But then he’s gone like he was never there.

Charles squeezes his eyes shut. “That went well,” he mutters to the empty room.

There’s a screech of tires outside. His CIA tails getting pulled away by Moira’s governmental puppet strings.

Showtime.

\--

Shaw, as it turns out, is an utter bastard.

Charles is pretty much expecting that.

He isn’t, however, expecting _Erik_ to know him.

“Erik Lehnsherr,” Shaw says pleasantly, when they bust into the room, “My dearest protégé. What brings you to my door?”

Shit.

Luckily, the one other thing that makes Charles an exceptional spy? His ability to improvise.

\--

Severe blood loss is not conducive to swimming with a half-dead grown man in one’s arms. However, Charles is nothing if not persistent.

He drags Erik to shore as the submarine pitches vertical on the horizon, and abruptly begins to pass out.

He takes a mental tally with his dwindling faculties: Hank should be returning their Homeland Security mole to his office, none the wiser, Alex is fleeing the scene with police in tow, and Raven is safe at his apartment, her name cleared, at least on paper.

Shaw is dead. And while he could have told Charles what the hell the burn notice is about, now that Charles knows what he did to Erik’s family, he can’t bring himself to be upset about the loss of intel.

He watches Erik breathe roughly into the sand, coughing up seawater, and then everything slips out of focus.

\--

Erik is not there when he wakes. But Charles is guessing that of the two of them, Erik is probably in the better circumstances.

The lamp in the interrogation room is effectively bright. It sends a lancing pain through his head.

“Mr. Xavier,” says a smooth, female, and altogether unpleasant voice. “You are just causing no end of trouble, aren’t you?”

“What can I say?” Charles says, squinting. “I’m a man of many talents.”

“And you demonstrate them with great aplomb,” the voice observes.

There is a whisper of papers. Probably his drastically altered dossier, courtesy of Shaw.

“Listen,” the voice says, after a moment. “I get that you’re upset. Being burned is no one’s idea of a good time. So I have a proposition for you.”

Charles exhales very slowly. “I’m listening.”

\--

Two days later, Charles emerges, dry and clean and mostly recovered, from an unmarked black town car in front of his apartment building with three things: a name for the voice, a new set of government shackles, and a far larger and more powerful set of enemies.

He makes his way up the stairs and realizes that he doesn’t have his keys.

He thumps his head on the door in frustration.

And nearly falls over as the door is yanked open.

He looks up, and smiles. “Erik. What are you doing here? You look a right mess.”

Erik stares at him. And then Charles finds himself crushed into an embrace that's desperate in a way he hadn’t actually thought Erik capable of feeling.

“You’ve been gone for three days. Three days, and no message, no sign, I thought—Jesus, Charles, I thought—”

He’s gripping Charles around his shoulders tight enough that it really ought to hurt while his opposite arm is wrapped around the small of Charles' back, fingers digging into his ribs like Erik can’t breathe unless he’s certain that what’s beneath his hand is real.

Charles recovers as best he can, and tries his best to soothe him.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs. “I’m fine, I was brought in to have a chat with someone new, goes by the name of Emma Frost apparently, and now I’m in a whole new bind, but I’m fine.”

“Jesus,” Erik chokes, “Jesus _Christ_. Charles.”

And then they’re kissing, and they’re both sober for it, and Charles had forgotten how good Erik is at this, even when he tastes like tears. He shifts closer in Erik’s arms, and cards his fingers though his hair to grip the back of his head. He pulls away, but only far enough to speak.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises, and this time, he means it in a good way.

\--

The drug cartel’s enforcer is looking pale and shivery and satisfyingly terrified. He’s staring bug-eyed at Hank, who is talking on his cell phone, blithely telling the cartel boss that said enforcer is about to sell him out to the Feds, and maybe he should start shopping around for a new one? Of course he knows a name, he knows everyone in this town.

“There’s a man called Erik. Erik Eagleton. I can give you an introduction, if you like. One problem though, he’s currently employed by someone else, so you’ll have to poach him. His boss? Some hotshot businessman, goes by Xavier. Yeah, I’ll hook you up, sure.”

Erik smiles thinly, pulling on leather gloves. He’s dressed in character, roughed up jeans and black t-shirt, looking dangerous and unflinching and competent. A cartel manager’s wet dream. 

...Possibly Charles' as well.

Hank snaps the phone shut.

“Who the hell _are_ you people?” the enforcer bursts out, half-hysterical. “What do you want?”

Charles steps out of the shadows, smiling blandly. He’s playing his part too, in pinstripes and patent leather shoes. Erik hovers at his shoulder, practically radiating satisfaction.

“My name’s Xavier. And you’re going to tell me everything,” he taps his temple once, “That I want to know.”


End file.
